Finding the joy every day

Learning to Be a Parent, Emergency-Room Style

If you’re a parent, or are good friends with one, you’ll quite probably agree with the fact that NOTHING, and I mean, NOTHING, prepares you for parenthood. And even if you have more than one, I’m going to wager a fiver they’re nothing alike, so all the rules you learn with one go out the window with the second. Or so my friends tell me.

Husband Dear was probably less clued up than I was in certain areas, and his ‘education’ was almost a constant source of mirth and merriment for me. Like the time DD had a crazy fever and was pitching a febrile fit. We rushed up to the emergency room, because, with her history, everything was always touch and go. They placed us in a triage area, each bed partitioned by a curtain.

Nurse: OK, we have to bring her fever down. The quickest way to do that is to administer the medicine up the back passage.

Husband: (pokes head out of curtain and looks down the hallway) What’s wrong with right here?

Nurse (rolls eyes, looks at me for support): Up the back passage….you know…

Husband: ….

Nurse (exasperated): Up her bottom!

Husband (horrified): Why didn’t you just say that? You can do that?!

The icing on the cake was DD’s little monkey face when she realised something was going up rather than coming down! EXCUSE-ME-do-I-know-you-have-we-been-introduced-what-ARE-you-doing? I have never seen a five-month-old look so disgruntled in all my life. I don’t think my hooting laughter helped.

Any amusing emergency room stories? Any weird discoveries you made as a first-time parent?

OMG. I had no idea they would shave that area for my c-section! My husband stood there and snickered at the look on my face when I realized what was happening. And she only did half. It looked so fucked up. They should put this stuff in the “What To Expect” books.

So, it’s always a bad sign when one knows more than the attending nurse. I was in a car accident (interesting story in and of itself) and showed signs of severe swelling on my sciatic nerve. The nurse was about to stick me with something when I asked what it was.

Dilaudid.

Isn’t that about four times stronger than morphine? I haven’t eaten anything but a donut!

You’ll be fine. [push]

I spent the next six hours hallucinating and throwing up. My friends tell me I waxed eloquent on hospital conspiracies to fleece patients.

Needless to say, when the hospital made a “billing error” and tried to charge me double what I owed, they promptly backed off.

We were in Italy staying near Sorrento. The drive to our villa was treacherous and my husband I had agreed that we would only do it once per day. My little guy and I were dancing and he fell and split his chin open on the terracotta floor. But he was bleeding badly and I told my husband we had to go to the ER in Sorrento. His response “but we’ve already driven up and down that road today”. Seriously?? So we take him to the ER and it’s DARK! Like no lights on. I had to hunt down someone to help us. And no one spoke English which was odd because Sorrento is very touristy and everyone spoke English within the town but apparently not in the ER?? Anyways, no anesthetic, just 4 grown men holding him down to do his stitches. To this day, he’s still traumatized when he falls, terrified he might need stitches!